BY MULUGETA GUDETA
Once upon a time, coffee was the most lucrative cash crop in Ethiopia bringing in the highest amount of revenue from external trade. Now the honor is taken up by khat, the narcotic plant which is chewed in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Yemen and in other countries. Khat is found as far as in London but coffee has become a staple beverage all over the world.
What is fascinating about coffee is not only its being discovered in Ethiopia, in a particular district called Kaffa but also for the speed with which it spread all over the world. Ethiopia may not be the biggest coffee producer in the world but it must be one of the highest consumers of a beverage that was discovered in the lash forest by young shepherds quite by accident.
Since coffee has become a universal beverage, societies around the world have been drinking it in accordance with their cultures and traditions. In Italy for instance, coffee is usually drunk with milk and given another name which is called cafelatte (coffee with milk).
In some other countries coffee is drank with a number of additional ingredients such as cream, honey, and sugar. In all these cases however coffee remains the basic beverage while the ingredients are added in order to change its taste to the better.
In Ethiopian rural societies where coffee is a staple beverage from morning to evening, coffee is drank either black or without any addition or with salt, in order to give it slightly sour taste.
Many people in the rural areas may believe that drinking coffee is good for the health and yet, salt being a chemical that retains fluid in the body, it is not medically advised to be consumed with coffee because it can lead to hypertension or aggravates an already existing condition.
After a long and arduous day of hard work, farmers and their families gather around the fire in the evening and drink coffee before they go to bed. This may help them boost their spirits although medically speaking coffee tends to chase sleep and many people tend to avoid it around sleep time.
Many people apparently drink coffee for one basic reason: it is mood lifting, a source of short-lived euphoria that make you feel energetic or because coffee is a beverage that helps people gather together and indulge in social gossips. Coffee is also drunk for its curative properties against headache, or some other ailments or conditions requiring relaxed feeling and energetic mood. That is why coffee is also one of the most preferred beverages for people who spend their times working in offices or in farms.
Tens of millions of Ethiopian farmers start their days with not a single cup of coffee that is usually absorbed in other countries, but at least with four cups of coffee.
The Ethiopian coffee ceremony has three stages called abol,tona and bereka and people consume at least one cup at every stage. There are even people who drink two cups at each stage and consume six cups of coffee in total. Most farmers and their families eat bread or roasted grain or a kind of chapatti on which they paste aromatic butter while the wealthier ones eat porridge with butter or honey.
Then they take their coffee that not only lifts their mood and prepare them for the day’s hard works but also promotes their digestion and make them feel great.
In Ethiopia, coffee is never drank on empty stomach because farmers are aware of its negative impact on the stomach not from medical literature but from their experience.
Most of them drink their coffee black although in many cattle raising communities, butter is added to the coffee with varying amounts. In the south-western communities of the gurage ethnic group a lot of butter is added in the black coffee more particularly during annual celebrations or some rituals or others.
A recent information on black coffee suggests that coffee should be drank without any addition, neither sugar, coffee, milk or some other additive, if people are
intent on losing weight. Black coffee is thus singled out as a weight loss beverage and this is supported by scientific research that corroborated the claim.
Black coffee has this other property of limiting or curbing appetite which, in a way, regulates weight loss or gain. The science of weight loss or gain is based on this simple arithmetic: the more you eat the more weigh you gain and the less you eat the more weigh you shed.
However this simple arithmetic of addition and subtraction is difficult to achieve when it comes to regulating appetite that involves many more sophisticated factors than eating more or eating less.
Speaking of weight loss, Ethiopians have some other natural remedy for what is actually ailing hundreds of millions of people around the world. Obesity has become the leading global health hazard both in poor and rich countries where people suffer from non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and diabetes mellitus.
In Ethiopia, both Muslims (Ramadan) and Christians (Lent) have periods of fasting that can be used as a period of rest for the body and an opportunity for shedding excess fat in a natural and slow manner without pills or medical intervention.
The coming fasting season of Lent is a good opportunity for Christians, mainly living in urban areas, to shed some weight or an opportunity for the body to cleanse itself from many toxic materials that accumulate in their bodies during the hard-eating period of the pre-fasting times.
The reason is also simple. If you add butter, milk, sugar or even salt, the added ingredients tend to add more calories and fats to the coffee thereby causing health hazards While drinking black coffee contains less calories and more healthy substances.
That does not however mean that drinking coffee in excess does not create health hazards, According to a recent research result, excessive coffee consumption can lead to hallucinations and other undesirable effects on the mind. However from the medical point of view, drinking moderate amounts of coffee can have serious health benefits.
One research suggests that people who drink from four to six cups of coffee every day can be protected from stomach cancer and other ailments. Another finding says that black coffee can provide natural protection against Type 2 diabetes. There are also many articles posted on the social media displaying the virtues of drinking black coffee.
There have also been many myths and misconceptions circulating in the medical and non-medical circles about the benefits of drinking or not-drinking coffee. Over all the consensus is that drinking coffee in moderate amounts can be beneficial for human health. Among the myths that have been circulating is the one that claims that drinking coffee regularly boosts creativity
and imagination and this view is apparently maintained by artists who spend long hours before the canvass, at their writing desks or playing music.
There is a quotation from a classic French writer hanging on the wall at the Tomoca coffee shop in Addis Ababa saying that creativity and ideas come cascading down to the imagination whenever he drinks coffee. This is an excellent advertising piece for coffee that has become the proffered beverage of humanity.
Black coffee is also the most preferred beverage of psychics, spirit persons and mediums in Ethiopia. That is why in Ethiopia coffee can be called “the drink of house spirits or gods” always present at the rituals. Black coffee is not only good for weight loss or curb diabetes or cancer as the medics tell us. It is also beautiful to look at. The best Arabica coffee in Ethiopia looks “oily” after roasting and the smell has something magical about it.
By the way, speaking of coffee smelling, we can point out in passing that smelling or not smelling ground coffee has recently believed to be one of the most reliable symptoms of COVID-19 infection.
This is not however an absolute indicator of infection. It is only a kind of quick check up tool. According to the medics, You may have COVID-19 and be able to smell ground coffee. On the other hand you may not be able to smell ground coffee and be free from COVID-19.
Ethiopian coffee connoisseurs and coffee testers often say that roasted Ethiopian coffee has a nice and sweaty look and a particularly beautiful aroma. Ethiopian Arabica and Robusta coffees are believed to be some of the best types in the entire world. They may also be the healthiest when drank black and without additives. For now Ethiopia coffee drinking culture, i.e. drinking coffee black without any additives, must be the healthiest one if we go by the latest gossips.
Like anything good in the world, this healthy culture or habit may be subverted by unhealthy habits like drinking coffee with too much sugar, cream or too much milk or any other unhealthy substance. Once upon a time Ethiopians had a healthy eating habit with occasional fasting and vegetarian diet. This is no more the case as Western eating habits have infiltrated our kitchens.
The trouble is that our coffee drinking or culture too might be overtaken by Western habits. Better take care and defend our black coffee because science is on our side and people in the West are struggling to imitate our good habit that is free from white sugar, fat from creams or too much additives that are bad for the health.
Let us therefore try to protect the young generation not only from junk food and sugary drinks that are actually behind the rise in obesity and childhood diabetes but also from coffee saturated with too much fat and glucose.
The Ethiopian Herald February 5/2013
